Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Isobel had not meant to listen. That was what people said when they had listened with particular care.
The feast had grown louder, warmer and easier.
Margaret was still sitting beside her, speaking with such unaffected kindness that Isobel had almost forgotten to be guarded.
Across the table, Colin and Niall were engaged in some contest of insults so polished it had plainly been practiced for years.
Domhnall watched them with the patience of a man accustomed to preventing murder only when necessary.
Then, near the lower end of the table, a man spoke in a voice meant to go unheard.
“MacLean should have ended it already. All this writing tae the Crown after he provoked Sleat himself.”
Isobel’s fingers stilled upon her cup. Margaret heard it, too. Her glance sharpened, but Isobel spoke immediately, refusing to allow that man a single word more.
“Laird MacLean didnae provoke Ewen. Ewen sent men on tae Duart lands, loosed an arrow, and one of those men was taken alive before escaping. Those arenae provocations. They are attacks.”
The man colored slightly. “Me lady, I meant only?—”
“I am sure ye did.”
A few faces turned. Isobel felt their attention settle upon her, but once begun, pride would not allow retreat.
The man muttered. “Still, a laird should answer steel with steel, nae hide behind parchment.”
The warmth in Isobel’s chest changed at once. It ceased to be discomfort and became anger.
“Careful,” she urged softly, but dangerously.
The man looked up.
Isobel met his eyes across the candles. “Ye may dislike me husband’s caution, and if ye have a wiser plan tae offer ye should speak tae him, tae his face. But ye willnae call restraint cowardice merely because it lacks the noise tae impress ye.”
The table had gone very still.
“And if Laird MacLean chooses nae tae spill blood in his own hall, after men have already tried tae shed mine, then I think that proves nae weakness, but command of himself. A quality some men mistake, perhaps, because they have never possessed it.”
Colin made a strangled sound into his cup. Niall looked as if he had acquired immediate affection for her. Margaret’s hand found Isobel’s beneath the table and pressed once, warm and approving. Only then did Isobel realize how quickly her heart was beating.
She rose. “Fergive me. I shall return presently.”
She left before anyone could answer. The corridor beyond the hall was cool enough to feel like a hand laid to her flushed face. She drew in a breath scented with damp stone, rushes, and the distant salt of the sea. Her anger still moved through her.
She had defended him without hesitation not out of duty, not because he was laird of Duart, but because he was Ruaridh. That was considerably worse.
She turned the corner and nearly collided with him.
Ruaridh caught her by the arms, steadying her before she could stumble. “Isobel?”
His hands were warm through her sleeves. His eyes moved over her face at once, taking inventory of every disturbance.
“What happened?”
“Naething.”
His expression said plainly that he believed none of it. But, before he could speak, voices sounded from the passage beyond. They belonged to Sorcha and Torin.
Isobel’s eyes widened. Ruaridh reacted faster. He drew her sideways into a narrow alcove half-hidden behind a hanging, pressing back into the shadow with her between him and the wall. The space was so small that she had one hand against his chest before she understood where she was.
“Ruaridh,” she whispered.
“Quiet.”
Torin and Sorcha came into view a heartbeat later, too close for escape.
“I didnae say I was ashamed of it,” Sorcha was saying, her voice low and trembling at the edges. “I said I was afraid.”
Torin’s answer was rough with feeling. “Of me?”
“Of these feelings I have fer ye.”
Isobel went perfectly still. So did Ruaridh.
Torin made a sound, half pain, half tenderness. “Sorcha, I have had feelings fer ye fer so long I scarcely remember the man I was before them.”
Sorcha’s breath caught.
Ruaridh’s hand tightened at Isobel’s waist. She felt each finger and the strength held carefully in check. Her own breath had become shallow. His chest rose beneath her palm. The alcove seemed to grow warmer, smaller, utterly without mercy.
“I cannae offer ye ease,” Torin whispered. “Nae yet. Nae as ye deserve.”
“I didnae ask fer ease,” Sorcha replied. “Only truth.”
There was a silence, then the softest sound of cloth shifting, perhaps hands meeting. Isobel stared at Ruaridh’s throat because she could not look elsewhere without looking at his mouth.
“That,” Torin said hoarsely, “ye have.”
Their footsteps moved on at last, fading down the passage. Neither Ruaridh nor Isobel stirred. For several seconds, the only sound was their breathing. Then Ruaridh looked down at her.
“Ye defended me,” he spoke.
The heat in her cheeks returned. “Ye heard?”
“Aye. I was just about tae return tae the dining hall, but yer words made me halt.”
“Then ye should ken I did so only because the man was wrong.”
His mouth lowered a fraction. “Of course.”
“And foolish.”
“A grave offence.”
“And insulting.”
“That, I gathered.”
His hand was still at her waist. Hers was still over his heart. Her fingers curled into his shirt. Ruaridh’s gaze changed.
“Isobel…”
It was half warning, half plea. She did not know which she preferred.
Neither moved. Then he bent his head and kissed her.
It was not the careful kiss of a husband mindful of an open corridor and guests beyond the walls.
It was fierce and silent, made sharper by all they dared not say aloud.
Isobel answered before pride could object, rising against him, catching at his shoulders, and feeling the hard stone at her back and the harder strength of him before her.
His hand slid into her hair. “Tell me tae stop.”
She shook her head once, feeling breathless. “Nay.”
The word undid them both. He gathered her closer, turning them deeper into shadow, his mouth finding hers again and again until thought abandoned propriety altogether.
Isobel felt the world narrow to heat, his breath against her throat and her name broken low against her ear.
Even there, even in the dark, he paused for her answer in every touch.
And she gave it.
With trembling hands and a heart no longer capable of denial, Isobel pulled him nearer.
He lifted her against him, shielding her from the cold stone, and she clung to him.
He kissed the hollow beneath her ear, slow and deliberate, driving her wild with desire.
His hand moved beneath her loosened skirts, warm against the bare skin above her stocking.
“Ruaridh,” she whispered, though she knew better than to trust her own voice. “The feast… they will notice.”
His mouth moved lower, over the pulse beating wildly at the base of her neck. “Then we must be quiet.”
That was an absurd thing to say, considering what he was doing to her.
His fingers slid higher, coaxing rather than taking.
Isobel’s breath caught as his palm settled against the inside of her thigh.
She ought to have reminded him that they stood in a passage with guests only yards away.
Instead, she leaned more fully into the wall and let him part her.
Then, his fingers found her. Isobel bit back a gasp, turning her face sharply into his shoulder to muffle it.
The touch was light at first, maddeningly so, a slow stroke over the place where all feeling seemed to gather.
Her hands clutched at his shirt. The rough linen bunched beneath her fingers, and down, she could feel his manhood press against her thigh.
He kissed her temple. “There?”
She could not answer properly. He stroked again, firmer this time, and her hips moved before pride could forbid them.
Ruaridh’s breath roughened. “Aye… there.”
His fingers circled her slowly, then faster, learning her in silence. Isobel’s body answered with mortifying honesty. Her head tipped back against the stone, and her breath came in shallow, uneven pulls. The feast seemed impossibly close and very far away.
Ruaridh bent and kissed her breast through the loosened edge of her gown, then tugged the fabric aside just enough for his mouth to find her pebbled nipple.
“Ruaridh,” she whispered, scandalized and desperate at once.
He answered by drawing one tight peak into his mouth.
Pleasure struck so sharply she nearly cried out.
He caught the sound with his kiss, covering her mouth with his as his hand continued its wicked work beneath her skirts.
Isobel opened to him, to his tongue, his touch, the heat of him pressing her into shadow.
He drew back just enough to speak against her lips. “Slower?”
“Nay.”
“Harder?”
Her cheeks burned. He waited.
Cruel man.
“Aye,” she breathed. “A little.”
The sound he made was almost a groan. “That’s me good lass.”
She might have scolded him for that had his fingers not obeyed her.
The firmer pressure stole every thought from her head.
Isobel clung to him, shivering as the pleasure climbed and tightened, bright as sparks beneath her skin.
He kissed his way along her jaw to her ear, murmuring praise in a voice so low and rough that the words seemed meant for her body as much as her mind.
“Ye are safe,” he whispered. “I have ye. Only me.”
Only him.
That was the final undoing. Her release came suddenly, silently only because his mouth covered hers.
Her body trembled hard against him, every pulse of pleasure dragging her higher until she feared she might collapse without his arms around her.
Ruaridh held her through it, one hand at her waist, the other still gentle between her thighs as the last waves softened into warmth.
For several heartbeats, she could do nothing but breathe against him.
He rested his forehead against hers. “Isobel.”
There was restraint in his voice now, strained nearly to breaking. She felt him against her, hard and wanting. The knowledge sent a fresh, deep ache through her.
She touched his face. “I want ye.”
His eyes closed briefly, as if the words wounded him with pleasure.
“Here?” he asked.
She listened. The laughter from the hall rose again, then faded. Footsteps passed somewhere distant and did not turn their way. The alcove held them close and hidden.
“Here,” she whispered.
His hand trembled once at her waist. Then he kissed her, fierce and reverent together, while she helped him with the unfastening of his breeches.
There was no elegance in it, no careful arrangement suitable for a bedchamber.
He lifted her carefully, bracing her against the wall.
Isobel wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs about his hips, trusting the strength that had so often defended her and now held her with such exquisite care.
“Tell me again,” he said, his voice rough.
“I want ye.”
He entered her slowly despite his need. The stretch of him made her clutch at him, her forehead dropping to his shoulder. She allowed the full, overwhelming sensation of him to wash over her. When he was fully inside her, they both went still.
Isobel closed her eyes.
This, she thought, is madness. Glorious, reckless madness.
And yet there was no shame in it, not with him, not when his mouth brushed her cheek so gently and his breath shook as if she held all the power in the world over him.
His control broke. He moved, each thrust measured to keep them quiet, each retreat and return sending pleasure curling through her anew. Isobel pressed her mouth to his shoulder to swallow her sounds. His breathing grew harsher, and his hands more possessive.
Ruaridh shifted his hand between them, finding the place still sensitive from his earlier touch.
He circled her throbbing bead, and her nails bit into his shoulder.
The pleasure gathered fast, made sharper by the danger and the man inside her losing the last of his restraint because of her.
His rhythm grew deeper, more urgent, though he kept one arm locked securely beneath her, shielding her from every rough edge of the wall.
“Finish with me,” he breathed against her ear. “Mo chridhe, finish with me.”
She did. Her body tightened around him, release sweeping through her in hot, silent waves.
Ruaridh covered her mouth with his own, swallowing the broken sound she could not hold back.
A moment later he shuddered, withdrawing just in time, his body tensing hard against hers as his release spilled between them.
For a long while, they remained as they were, hidden, breathless and entwined.
From the dining hall came a burst of laughter, followed by the scrape of benches. No one knew that in a dark alcove outside the feast, Isobel had given herself to her husband with no fear, no duty, and no wish to be anywhere else.
Ruaridh lowered her carefully to her feet but did not release her. He adjusted her gown with hands that were far less steady than they ought to have been, smoothing the fabric back into place with absurd solemnity.
She looked at him and almost laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“Fer a laird, ye make an excellent lady’s maid.”
His eyes darkened with amusement. “Dinnae tell Sorcha.”
“She would be impossible if she kent.”
“So would Colin.”
At that, Isobel did laugh, softly enough to be safe. Ruaridh kissed the sound from her mouth. Then, together, they listened for footsteps, straightened what could be straightened, and prepared to return to the feast as though nothing at all had happened.